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Yesterday, on Memorial Day, I visited the gravesite of my parents. They are buried in a military cemetery due to my father's service. He was an infantryman in WWII, having entered that conflict at Normandy. His unit fought it's way through France and into Germany. Fortunately, almost miraculously, my father did not die in combat (or I wouldn't be here), though the war affected him profoundly for the rest of his life. I'm not going into details, but suffice it to say, war is hell. Like most Americans, I consider every man and woman who fought and/or died for this country to be a hero.

I only know one way to say it - the Obama people are making absolute fools of themselves over Bain Capital's relationship with GST Steel. They are also making fools of themselves for attacking Romney's successful business experience (experience that candidate Obama lacked in 2008, btw).

The Obama campaign ad accuses Romney/Bain of vampire capitalism, of destroying GST Steel in order to profit from the carnage. A former GST employee says in the ad, "It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us".

The real story of GST is that of a private-equity firm trying to spark some life into a uncompetitive, over-unionized industry. Bain's crime here—if that's what you call it—was giving a dying steel plant an unexpected eight-year lease on life.

When Bain bought the Kansas City mill in 1993, steel was a scene of carnage. Global players were pouring out cheap products, and America's high-cost steel plants couldn't compete. The industry had lost 200,000 jobs in preceding years. In 1992 alone, the six largest U.S. steel mills had lost a combined $3 billion. Armco, the company Bain would buy the plant from, would lose $641 million in 1993.

Some guy name Rex Nutting at MarketWatch wrote a piece called 'Obama Spending Binge Never Happened', in which he claims federal spending increases under Obama are at the lowest rate since the 1950's. The liberal talking heads at MSNBC immediately went into self-satisfied smirk overdrive (am I the only one to notice the ever-present, weird, bemused smirk they all seem to have, as if they can hardly believe they even have to point out their obvious superiority to the rest of us rubes? It's almost children-of-the-cornish). The liberal talkers all basically concluded that this proves yet again that those evil conservatives are lying to us.

You've probably seen the stupid Obama campaign ads that blame Mitt Romney for the bankruptcy of GST Steel, a company that was run by Romney's Bain Capital group. The ads don't bother to mention that GST Steel went bankrupt two years after Romney left Bain, or that steel companies were dropping like flies at the time, or all the successful Bain businesses that blossomed during Romney's tenure, or the overall impressive record of success of Bain. You don't hear any of that, because those truths are inconvenient to Obama's re-election strategy.

In spite of the false perception left by these friends of Obama ads, what I find interesting about them is the way they demonize private investment capital. It's as if Obama's friends believe that if Bain invests private capital in a business, and the business ultimately doesn't work out (even if the failure comes eight years later, as was the case with GST Steel), some kind of sin has been committed by the "evil" investors. This is an incredibly simple-minded and fantasy-driven way to view business. The truth is, MOST business ventures don't work out. There is substantial risk involved with investing in a business. 2005 information from the U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics reveals that only 44% of new businesses are still operating after four years. When investors invest in a business, odds are they are going to lose their money. Bain Capital lost it's investment many times over the years. That's the nature of the game, but Bain also had a string of successes, and that's where Bain made most of it's money. Take Staples, for instance. When Bain acquired the office supply retailer in 1986, Staples had one store. By 2011, Staples grew to over 2,000 stores. That's where jobs come from, but I bet you won't hear about Staples in any Obama ads. Instead, you'll hear about how Romney is a vampire capitalist who strip mines companies, even though it's hogwash.

In the runup to the 2008 presidential election, the liberal media basically ran against Sarah Palin, not John McCain. I can't remember the second banana on the ticket ever causing such a fuss, as did Palin. We were warned repeatedly how tragic it would be if Palin became VP, a mere heartbeat away from the top job. Could we imagine having a dolt like Palin so close to the presidency ?, they cried. I always wanted to respond, "whaddya mean, imagine it ? It's going to happen, and his name is Joe Biden !". Somehow, the same media that was peeing it's collective pants over Palin had no objection to the Gaffemaster General in the VP slot. Go figure. The frequency of Biden gaffes corresponds roughly to the number of times he opens his mouth. Last week, Biden outed Obama's "evolution" on gay marriage before Obama wanted him to. The week before that Biden went around questioning whether Romney would have made the call to get Bin Laden, when Biden himself didn't want to go after Bin Laden at Abbottobad. In effect, Biden was saying we can't trust Biden to be the President.

Biden's gaffes go well beyond his continual instances of foot-in-mouth disease. His decisions on foreign policy serve as a pretty good contra-indicatior of what should be done. He's like the Wrong Way Corrigan of foreign policy. This is odd, because foreign policy is supposed to be Biden's strength. He was a long-time member and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Team Obama's Diversion of The Week re-election strategy for the current seven day period is gay marriage. Our deep-thinking President searched the depths of his formerly homophobic, gay-bashing soul and discovered his views on gay marriage had flip-flopped, er, I mean, "evolved". Flip-flopping is something the Republican apostate Romney does. Obama evolves. Obama's Diversion Of The Week re-election team (the mainstream media) immediately went into worship mode and regaled us with tales of Obama's epic courage and historic historicness . That completely objective left-wing rag, Newsweek magazine, immediately pronounced Obama 'The First Gay President'. The Washigton Post, allegedly through sheer coincidence, dropped a lengthy story about challenger Romney's 1965 alleged gay-bashing haircutting prank THE VERY NEXT DAY. I assume WaPo thinks the word "coincidence" means 'when it will have the most dramatic effect". You could practically hear the WaPo editors all joining in a rousing chorus of "NOW !!!" before they dropped the story. Also of note is this fact - the only things we know about Obama's high school misdeeds is what Obama told us himself in his book. The media has no interest in Obama's misspent youth, when Obama, by his own admission, attended class sparingly and did drugs and alcohol regularly. If the media will interview everyone who ever went to school with Romney in order to dig up dirt, why won't they do the same with Obama ? Golly gee, what in the world could the reason be for that double standard ? As if we didn't know. I don't call the mainstream media the "Obama's re-election team' for nothing.

Being pro-gay marriage myself, I might be impressed by Obama's re-awakening on the issue, except that there's no meat on Obama's gay marriage bone (no pun intended). He said he will propose no legislation, and said the issue should be left up to the states. That's the same position the anti-gay marriage Romney holds, so what am I supposed to be impressed about ? Nothing has actually changed. Things are exactly like they were before. Apparently, the mainstream media is having too gay of an old time to notice.

There's an interesting history between our presidential candidates on the gay marriage issue. It's a flip-flopper's, er, I mean, an evolver's dream. The Wall Street Journal listed these Obama gay marriage positions:

Obama on Gay Marriage • 1996, running for Illinois state Senate: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriage." • 2004, running for U.S. Senate: "Marriage is between a man and a woman. • 2010, as president: "My feelings are constantly evolving" on gay mar riage. • 2012, as president: "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

As for Romney, the New York Times points out that Romney said he would seek "full equality" for gays in a letter to Log Cabin Massachusetts Republicans during Romney's 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy. Now Romney is against gay marriage, and is even against gay civil unions. Romney said the issue should be left up to the states like Obama has, but Romney also supported the Defense Of Marriage Act that would bar gay marriage on a national level, so Romney has a flip-flop inside a flip-flop on the gay marriage issue. It ain't easy to be THAT politically inept.

The bottom line is this - both candidates are telling their ideological bases what they want to hear now, just as both candidates have taken whatever position they thought would be beneficial for their political aspirations in the past. What I see is a couple politicians with their fingers in the wind, and not much more.

President Obama officially kicked off his re-election campaign over the weekend, which was news to me. NOW Obama is campaigning ? What has he been doing thus far ? I hear him campaigning every time he stands in front of a microphone. Always have. I can't recall a more political, self-promoting President in my lifetime. Here's a thought experiment for you. Try to think of an Obama speech where he didn't attack his opposition and blame everything on them. There may be a few instances, but I don't recall them. I've heard Obama give the "it's Bush's fault", "it's the GOP Congress' fault", "it's the Supreme Court's fault" speech so many times I could recite the words in my sleep. That may be normal during campaign season, but Obama has given that speech nonstop ever since he was elected President.

Because the 2008 Obamamania Fever is lacking this time around, I'm interested in what Obama's supporters are citing as reasons to re-elect their man in 2012. Here are some comments from Obama supporters at the Obama campaign kickoff event at Ohio State University (which had thousands of empty seats): “I’m not satisfied with his four years,” said Anita Bixenstine, 68, of Kent, Ohio. “But I think he’s been fighting a do-nothing Congress and some bad public opinion.”

Five upstanding-looking men were arrested for trying to blow up the Route 82 bridge over the Cuyahoga Valley National Park on monday night. These left-wing nimrods call themselves anarchists and are associated with the Occupy movement. Had the anarcho-Occupiers been successful, we'd have many murdered Ohioans, because they tried to detonate the C-4 they'd placed at the base of the bridge as cars were driving over the bridge, according to an FBI affidavit. Fortunately, the C-4 was sold to the Freak Five by an undercover FBI agent, and it was inert. There was no boom-boom, no collapsing bridge, no dead people, and no pointless statement about disrupting Ohio commerce, as the Freak Five desired. The Cleveland Occupy movement quickly tried to distance itself from the bungled bombers, saying the Occupy movement was "peaceful" and does not condone their actions. While I agree that drum circles are a more peaceful form of protest than bridge bombings, I wouldn't exactly refer to the Occupiers as peaceful. Here are some of the Occupier actions from yesterday's May Day protests: